Recently the 8th grade students were learning about the Underground Railroad. They wanted to understand better what life was like in the South for African Americans. For a long time African Americans had been enslaved to work for countless hours with hardly any breaks in between. The slaves would be working from sunrise until sunset where they would then be able to rest for just long enough that they could wake up and start work in the morning and do the same routine day after day. After many years of slavery in the North and South, in the year 1850, an enslaved female African American named Harriet Tubman led slaves, by way of the Underground Railroad to safety from Alabama to Montreal, Canada which is 1,379.5 miles. The slaves were very stressed not knowing who was their friend and who was their enemy. Throughout the years over 100,000 slaves escaped via the underground railroad to freedom and a new life where they could live how they wanted instead of being forced to do what their owner wanted them to do. During the study of African American slavery and their escapes from it, the eighth grade participated in a re-enactment. It gave them a view of what it was really like to be living in the time of slavery. This is an activity that only eighth grade participates in because that is when the Civil War and that time in history is studied.

Friday, September 22, 2017

Each year, kids die from heatstroke after being left in hot vehicles. That is why government officials are requiring automakers to create and install technology that alerts drivers when a child is left in the back seat. Some studies suggest that these types of accidents began because of a new legislation requiring children to sit away from dangerous airbags in the back seat, a location in which they could easily be forgotten and left behind. Because of these accidents, about 37 children die while trapped in hot vehicles each year, July being the deadliest of the months. The death toll has totaled at least 729 children since 1998.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., on July 3, had introduced a legislation requiring that all new vehicles come equipped with technology that will alert drivers if a child is left in the back seat once the car is turned off. This will prevent these kinds of deaths from happening. ”You get a warning when you leave the keys in the car,” Schakowsky said in a statement. “You should get a warning if you leave a child in the car.”

Jackie Gillan, the president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a D.C.-based coalition of consumer health and safety groups, said that a few GM models will prompt drivers to make sure to check the back seat if they had opened a rear door at the beginning of their trip. Other types of technology “can detect the smallest breath from a newborn” and alert a driver to remember to take them out of the car. Gillan said, "We need to educate people to look before they lock, but on the other hand we have a technology that will solve the problem.”

This kind of technology can prevent these accidental deaths from happening by alerting the drivers that their children are still in the car, reminding them to take their children out. When this alert technology is in all vehicles, this kind of death may be non-existent or rare.